Land Rover’s ride quality secret September 25, 2009
Posted by richard in : Minutiae of cars , 4commentsLAND Rovers all have a characteristic to their ride quality that has to be imparted on all its vehicles, chassis man Murray Dietsch told me.
The secret, he says, is to keep the car level. Not side to side, particularly, but fore-to-aft.
This is pitch. ‘Land Rovers shouldn’t pitch too much – we have a pre-determined rate, that we can get to quite quickly during CAE suspension layouts.’ The trick is to carry this through to real-life machines.
Not easy when you’re dealing with 2.7-tonnes of heavy off-roader, he adds. That’s where the vehicles’ air suspension comes in so handy; now masterminded, he adds, by a tech set-up based on Jaguar’s innovative CATS system.
In practice, this means all Land Rovers have a signature body motion over flowing, undulating roads. The front and rear ends rise and fall at similar rates, to give an almost undetected but exceedingly pleasant sense of satisfaction.
This is something felt all the time – whenever the car is moving, the suspension is working and the pitch rates are being manipulated. But it’s on serious undulations that you can best see it.
Try analysing it, next time you’re out in your car. And, to see what I’m talking about, check out (and feel the Disco lush of) the first half of this video:
Vauxhall gives new Astra suspension a twist
Relax: It’s ESP August 30, 2009
Posted by richard in : Technology , 7commentsAIRCRAFT can either show relaxed stability or positive stability.
Relaxed stability aircraft are unflyable without computer assistance – fly-by-wire. It’s impossible for a human to compensate for their sheer twitchiness. But this is what makes them so maneuverable and agile.
Positive stability airplanes, in contrast, are beauts. They’ll fly on their own, and the pilot can exhibit complete authority even if steering by their feet while watching Corrie. But, as a consequence, they are less agile, more lazy.
I felt this yesterday, when I went up in an Extra 300L. I also saw the former graphically demonstrated later, when the aerobatic jets did things so impossible, even fellow pilots couldn’t work out how it was done.
This is what F1 cars are like. They have high levels of relaxed stability: they are inherently unstable. Only drivers with the skill level of Hamilton and Schumacher can hope to control them, particularly when things get spicy.
They’re undrivable to the rest of us. In contrast to our road-going Vauxhalls, with which we can drive with our knees while sneezing and looking for a Nutri-Grain bar on the M1 at 85mph. But, get a Vectra on a track, and it’s not really as agile as an F1 car. Even if it had the power to match, it would be way slower.
I wonder, therefore, could ESP become the driver’s friend?
Instead of seeing it as a cop-out for softies (Real Men Hit The ESP-Off Button™), maybe it could help narrow the gap to road-going racers? Design a chassis that is so sharp and agile, it’s got the maneuverability of a Eurofighter – but standardise the electronic aids to make it actually drivable, too. Result? One searingly tenacious bit of kit.
Relying on the ESP would not be a pansy’s cheat, in the same way that you don’t find Eurofighter pilots turning the balancing regulator off.
And you don’t call RAF pilots girls, do you?
It’s a theory I’ll be pitching to a few chassis engineers in the coming months, to get their thoughts… which I’ll share with you – and hope you’ll share your ideas on it with me!
Why do people hate the Lotus Elan?
How Chevrolet today became cool
Where have all the new cars gone? August 26, 2009
Posted by richard in : Technology , add a commentVOLKSWAGEN’S Golf MkVI is a delight.
Great to drive, obsessively built and more appealingly styled than first appearances reveal, it’s every inch a real Golf.
The obvious maturation of the 1974 original, and a contender for best Golf ever. (Incidentally, my preference league is at the foot of this post).
But, it’s not all new. Yes, it was ‘new’, last year. But, it wasn’t really. Instead, it was a heavily revised version of the MkV Golf. Same roof, same door apertures, same platform.
Yes indeed – the same underpinnings that also live in the Audi A3, the Skoda Octavia, the SEAT Leon, the Volkswagen Jetta, the Audi TT, the… well, you get the idea.
Volkswagen’s policy of sharing the bits you can’t see across brands is long-established.
But, sharing bits across model generations? Saving even more cash? Well, it’s little short of an economist’s panacea.
And it’s not just VW that’s at it. Fiat based the 500 on Panda bits that were introduced in 2003 – then Ford bought into the project, and launched the 2008 ‘all new’ Ka on the same platform.
Renault’s Laguna is more satisfying than people give it credit for, yet it draws heavily from the shoddy old 2002 model. Jaguar’s brilliant XF? Why, a revised version of the soapy S-Type.
Aston Martin uses the same basic underpinnings for virtually everything it builds, Jaguar Land Rover has a policy of sharing bits across all vehicle lines, Porsche can’t be too hard on Wiedeking after he gave them the 996 underpinnings that are still being stretched and squeezed today… see what I mean?
And the result of all this is… cars better than they’ve ever been. No longer do makers have to chuck away all that went before and start again – because modern cars have reached a plateau of ability. They’re so good to start with, the great leaps of improvement are not there to be made. And the huge leaps in currently-applicable technology have all been discovered.
I reckon we’ll see more of this. How can Ford improve on the current Focus? Well, by making it that bit better. It doesn’t need to be any bigger – so, with the next one, why not just polish what’s there, rather than throwing billions into something all-new?
Volkswagen’s thinking with the Golf VI was to make something as good as the MkV, that could be built more cheaply. Thanks to the inherent ability of engineers to always improve, it’s actually got something that’s considerably better. All bits have been honed, everything polished. If it’s good enough to start with – and all new cars are – there’s no end to what the mechanical wizards in car firms can do to make it better.
Which means today’s cars are, I reckon, pretty much fixed in time. So that means they’ll be made, ad infintum? Absolutely not. The next big change will come in architecture. Cars will, in time, be lighter, cheaper to build, simpler, more recyclable, all of that futuristic stuff.
To achieve this, we need an entirely different type of car. This is where the thinking will be thrown out and the clean sheets begun. It will take a huge amount of cash, and is fraught with risks. But, while car firms get their heads around it, the process of perfecting today’s machines should ensure cars in the near-future will continue to be the best, ever.
And, given how new technology is rarely perfect first time, does this mean the cars of the next few years could even mark a high point, not to be seen again for several decades?
If so, I’ll certainly it while I can…
My top Golfs…
• Golf 6
• Golf 2
• Golf 1
• Golf 4
• Golf 3
• Golf 5
Volkswagen Golf GTD photostream on Flickr
Ford gloom hides people carrier revolution?
The Maestro of the instruments August 2, 2009
Posted by richard in : Minutiae of cars , 2commentsONE major advance of the Austin Maestro is often overlooked. Its fibre-optic instrument needle pointers.
Yes, indeedy.
See, in the olden days, cars used to have dials lit by a bulb drilled in the top of the dashboard. If, that is, they were lucky.
In time, makers such as Smiths integrated this into the dial itself, so the outside ring lit up. Very swish. But it was still somewhat coal-hole like in the dark.
Then, a few crazy car makers began to bedazzle awe-struck eyes like mine, with gorgeous backlit panels. These had all the lights behind the instrument face, with the numerals picked out in transparent plastic. The light shone through, as if the Lord himself had taken an interest, transforming night-time legibility.
But still the needles were just dumb sticks.
Enter the Maestro. And its fibre-optic instrument needle pointers.
How the motoring world today lives and breathes on these. Its influence is everywhere. It is the reason why the MkIV Golf got mouthwatering blue dials with red pointers. It’s how Volkswagen Group is able to differentiate stock instrument panels across different brands. It’s how Jaguar can refer to ‘Phosphorous Blue’ dial lighting in press info for the XF.
What is it? Well, just that. A fibre-optic, opaque-plastic needle. At night, light would shoot up it, bringing daylight to the entire needle. Like some sort of miraculous light sabre, it was Star Wars before your very eyes. It was why my Granddad had endless flat batteries on his Maestro Vanden Plas in winter.
Austin-Rover was dialling in a revolution here. How we should thus praise the majesty of the miraculous, mighty Maestro.
More on Mini’s classic brochure
Land Rover MINI has big future
What I learnt from Autocar – 18 March 09 March 19, 2009
Posted by richard in : What I learned today , add a comment… I saw a heavily cloaked test car a few weeks ago on the M42. Looked like a Jaguar, beneath the disguise. It was – the new XJ, which Hilton says will be unveiled in June.
It was going to be a reskin of the current model, but is much more than that. Jaguar’s taken the lessons from the XF – a rehashed S-Type – and applied them here, for an extensive overhaul using the same air-suspension wheelbase.
Styling will wow. Jaguar designer Adam Hatton stressed as much over a beer late last year, at a function in the Cotswolds… and I believe the Malvern-dwelling dude (who rates the Citroen C4, but doesn’t like the new MINI).
There’s even going to be an all-glass panoramic roof.
Jag’s 3.0-litre V6 diesel will feature: this is so powerful and eco, it makes the V8 diesel redundant. Range Rover only for that, then? Seems an expensive way of doing things.
… VW’s said it’s planning a Bluesport range of green performance cars. Like Bluemotion, but faster. Raking in more profits, then.
… Mercedes will sell a diesel version of the next SLK, due in two years. As it’s based on the fine current C-Class platform, expect the brilliant C 250 CDI engine to feature.
… Sweden is not to ban petrol and diesel in 2020. It will ban them in 2030 instead. So that’s why Saab and Volvo are so big on biofuels…
